In Pursuit of Elegance, by Matthew E. May - Excerpt

In URSUIT of LEGANCE
Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing
M A T T H E W E . M AY
B RO A D WAY B O O K S
New York
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Copyright © 2009 by Matthew E. May
All Rights Reserved
Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of

the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.,
New York.
www.broadwaybooks.com
BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the

diagonal, are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
All trademarks are the property of their respective companies.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
May, Matthew E.
In pursuit of elegance : why the best ideas have something missing /
Matthew E. May. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-385-52649-4
1. Creative ability. 2. Symmetry. 3. Planning. I. Title.
BF408.M329 2009
153.3'5—dc22
2008041812
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
First Edition
www.BroadwayBooks.com
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To purchase a copy of
In Pursuit of Elegance
visit one of these online retailers:

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Contents
P RO L O G U E
The Missing Piece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
CHAPTER ONE
Elements of Elegance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
CHAPTER TWO
Desperately Seeking Symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
CHAPTER THREE
Seduced by Nothing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
CHAPTER FOUR
Laws of Subtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

CHAPTER FIVE
On Sustainable Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
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CONTENTS
CONCLUSION
Elegance in Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
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FOREWORD
While brevity may not cause elegance, longwindedness

certainly prevents it. In that spirit, here is a 140-character
foreword. Why 140 characters? Because that’s the limit of a
Twitter “tweet.”
“Less is the new more.” Easy to learn: symmetry, seduction, subtraction,

and sustainability.Very valuable to do. Step 1: Read Matt’s book!!
Guy Kawasaki
Author of Reality Check and
cofounder of Alltop.com
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P RO L O G U E
The Missing Piece
O N S U N DAY, J U N E 10, 2007, nearly twelve million

television viewers in the United States tuned their
sets to HBO to watch the final episode of the hit series The
Sopranos. The show, which told the story of a modern-day
mob boss who runs a colorful crew of only slightly orga-
nized criminals in northern New Jersey, had garnered more
than twenty major awards over an eight-year period span-
ning six seasons, including both the Golden Globe for Best
Television Series and the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Se-
ries. Flush with acclaim previously enjoyed only by network
shows, The Sopranos touched off a renaissance of innovative
television, positioning HBO at the forefront of the enter-
tainment industry.
The last episode held the promise of being particularly
special, as creator David Chase would act as both writer and
director—something of a rare event since the early days
of the show in 1999. Television hadn’t seen such ballyhoo
and buildup since the Friends finale in 2004. Media critics
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heralded the end of an era, loyal followers expressed their

sadness on their blogs and Web pages, and even the highly
respected editorialist Peggy Noonan devoted her entire
weekend Declarations column in the Wall Street Journal to the
show that (violence and criminal behavior notwithstanding)
had so poignantly captured the challenges everyone faces in
work and life. In her words, “The Sopranos wasn’t only a great
show or even a classic. It was a masterpiece, and its end Sun-
day night is an epochal event.”
As the hour played out that Sunday evening, everyone
waited with anticipation to find out the fate of Tony So-
prano. Debates had been raging for the twenty-two months
since Chase had announced the final airdate: Would he or
wouldn’t he be “whacked”? But instead of receiving a concrete
answer to the big question, viewers sat shocked as, during the
final seconds of the show, their television screens suddenly
went black. Credits rolled within a few more seconds, and
The Sopranos series came to an end.
What is so fascinating about the abrupt ending is not the
decision itself, although it was unprecedented and broke new
ground artistically. Rather, what is most intriguing about the
black screen is the thinking behind how it came to be and
the aftermath.
The most immediate reaction—What just happened to my television
signal?—had nothing to do with the story line, but instead rested
on the assumption of electronic failure. Now, such a response
may have been predictable in this age of satellite and cable TV,
but what is so curious is that everyone had the same reaction:
something had gone wrong. Only when the credits rolled and
viewers realized that what they had just experienced was actually
the ending did they stop and think. And it’s what occurred over
the course of the next few days that’s worth noting.
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THE MISSING PIECE
The following Monday morning media coverage was over-

whelming, with every major news source weighing in, from
the New York Times to CNN. Critics, of course, cried foul and
accused David Chase of avoidance, gimmickry, and ulterior
motives. (Whatever fate Tony Soprano met would inevitably
disappoint some portion of the audience, and ambiguity left
open the option for a feature film.) Comedy shows like The
Daily Show immediately mocked the event and imitated the
act on their own programs. On the viewer side of the street,
though, the initial bitter disappointment at being left hang-
ing was quickly replaced by an unparalleled level of postshow
scrutiny coupled with a fresh appreciation for “the genius of
David Chase,” spurred by his semi-cryptic public comment
that “Anybody who wants to watch it, it’s all there.”
Realizing that every scene was carefully crafted by Chase,
viewers, aided by their TiVo recorders, reexamined the show
frame by frame, noting both blatant and subtle visual clues,
soundtrack hints, veiled dialogue, past-show references—
even nuances like camera angles, color palettes, and lighting
effects. Theory upon theory popped up in both online and
traditional media. The debate took on a life of its own. View-
ers crafted their own endings, filling in the missing scene with
the intricate trail of code Chase had provided. To most, Tony
Soprano’s fate became quite obvious, albeit only through a
full retrospective. From the initial uncertainty, at least three
different but distinct endings emerged, each with its own
camp of believers arguing vehemently for their version.
The point here is that no straightforward conclusion
would have engaged viewers with the same intensity and de-
bate. Even if they didn’t like it, most critics labeled the final
airing of The Sopranos as the creative highpoint of the 2007
season, with many hailing it the most innovative and memo-
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rable hour in recent television history. By all accounts, the

episode is quite indelible.
But what was the magic behind such dramatic and endur-
ing impact?
The answer to that question may lie in an unexpected
place: the words of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,

It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.
David Chase’s groundbreaking choice to abandon a con-

ventional story resolution certainly granted him the creative
freedom to solve several difficult character and plot prob-
lems at once with a single stroke. Not only could he tie to-
gether seemingly disparate story lines and random scenes,
but he deftly sidestepped disappointing a significant share
of the audience while achieving even greater viewer involve-
ment. The deeper thought and meticulous attention to detail
required to embed subtle clues in every scene pushed him to
elevate his art. The utter simplicity of the nothingness of that
black screen exacted stunning power—it riveted and seduced
the viewer. By leaving the conclusion open-ended, and thus
open to interpretation, Chase engaged his audience in an en-
tirely original and altogether different way, one that told his
viewers that he respected their intelligence and creativity.
Was the last episode of The Sopranos perfect? No. “Perfec-
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THE MISSING PIECE
tion” implies something finished, something flawless. The

show was anything but! It was, however, something perhaps
even more powerful. It was elegant.
a.
Gaze at the image below for a moment. The three sets of
right-angled lines depict something so ubiquitous that you’d
be hard-pressed to make it through the day without it. Can
you identify it?
If you can’t, it’s because a key piece of information is miss-

ing. Once that information is shared, however, you will never
again be able to see the image in quite the same way again.
You are looking at the uppercase version of the most widely used letter in
the English language. The letter, though, exists in the white space.
Do you see it now? It is the letter E. Look again. My guess is
that from now on, you’ll have difficulty not seeing it.
What you’ve just experienced is the power of “the missing
piece.” It’s not a parlor trick. It’s an example of the trans-
formative idea that lies at the heart of elegance, and at the
center of this book: what isn’t there can often trump what is.
Just as no traditional conclusion to The Sopranos series
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could have caused such a stir, no “complete” E, no matter

how elaborately or ornately rendered, could have engaged
you as fully and had the same kind of indelible impact on
you. Once you were given a clue, your brain created the image
for you, changing your mind-set, without your having much
say in the matter. Like The Sopranos finale, the incomplete E
took on a new form, a life of its own—one with real staying
power.
What is important to take away from this quick demon-
stration is that the full power of elegance is achieved when
the maximum impact is exacted with the minimum input.
Adding anything to the figure would have actually detracted
from the desired effect: the surprise you likely experienced
when the E became visible. The E is obvious only in retrospect,
but it is the unusually simple yet thoughtful construction of
what is there that gives the missing piece its surprising power.
Elegance is not, in other words, a matter of simple erasure.
The power of the missing piece—Lao Tzu’s what is not
there—is exactly what David Chase tapped into, consciously
or not, with his final episode of The Sopranos. Chase did what
the best innovators and most prolific individuals are doing in
many different domains: creatively engaging people’s imagi-
nations by leaving out the right things.
Although this is not necessarily a new idea (Lao Tzu’s
wisdom is easily over 2,500 years old), it remains rare and
radical nonetheless. If I asked you to tell me what the easiest
thing to do in any situation might be, you might naturally
and instinctively reply, with a nonchalant shrug of the shoul-
ders, “Nothing.” But doing nothing isn’t easy. In fact, it’s just
the opposite of what comes most naturally and instinctively.
Suppose, for example, you’re on an African photo safari
and are just about to click the perfect shot of a mother hip-
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THE MISSING PIECE
popotamus and her calf when she decides to charge. If you’re

like most people, you’d run so fast the cheetahs would be
jealous—and yet, National Geographic adventure journalist Boyd
Matson told me that even if you can run the hundred-yard
dash in nine seconds flat, that’s exactly what you shouldn’t do.
And he should know—charging mama hippos are part of a
day’s work for Boyd. As Boyd suggests, you should stand per-
fectly still—in other words, do nothing. But that’s hardly easy
when an angry two-ton beast is barreling toward you.
Moreover, if I told you to do nothing for the next five
minutes, my bet is you couldn’t—you would undoubtedly
do something during that time. What we normally think of as
the easiest thing in the world to do—nothing—is in reality
often the hardest.
b.
The value of what isn’t there dawned on bestselling busi-
ness author and self-employed professor Jim Collins when,
in the throes of his early post–Stanford Business School
career at Hewlett-Packard, his favorite former professor re-
proached him for a lack of discipline. An expert in creativity
and innovation, she told him his hard-wired energy level
was riding herd over his mental clarity, enabling a busy yet
unfocused life. Her words rang true: at the time, Jim was ag-
gressively chasing his carefully set stretch goals for the year,
confident in his ability to accomplish them. Still, his life
was crowded with the commotion of a fast-tracking career.
Her comment made him pull up short and reexamine what
he was doing. To help, she did what great teachers do, con-
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structing a lesson in the form of an assignment she called

“20-10”: Imagine that you’ve just inherited $20 million free and clear,
but you only have 10 years to live. What would you do differently—and
specifically, what would you stop doing?
The exercise did precisely what it was intended to do—
make Jim stop and think about what mattered most to him.
It was a turning point, for three reasons. First, he realized
he’d been racing down the wrong track spending enormous
energy on the wrong things. In fact, he woke up to the fact
that he hated his job. He promptly quit and headed back to
Stanford to launch a new career of research, teaching, and
writing.
Second, the assignment became a constant reminder of
just how important and precious his time is. He now starts
each year by choosing what not to do, and each of his to-do
lists always includes “stop-doing” items. Collins preaches his
practice, impressing upon his audiences that they absolutely
must have a “stop-doing” list to accompany their to-do lists.
As a practical matter, he advises developing a strong disci-
pline around first giving careful thought to prioritizing goals
and objectives, then eliminating the bottom 20 percent of
the list . . . forever.
Third, the strategy helped him identify what factors led
the companies he was studying to become “great” while oth-
ers remained merely “good.” The great companies routinely
eliminated activities and pursuits that did not significantly
contribute to the following criteria: profit, passion, and
perfection. Profit meant engaging in only the activities that
would result in value for both the company and the customer.
Passion meant having a sense of noble purpose beyond just
making money. And perfection meant focusing on flawlessly
executing each task in such a way as to make the competition
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THE MISSING PIECE
irrelevant. All three criteria had to be met in order for any

activity to remain in these great companies’ repertoires.
Jim Collins made the “stop-doing” argument in an elo-
quent essay, which appeared in USA Today:
A great piece of art is composed not just of what is

in the final piece, but equally what is not. It is the
discipline to discard what does not fit—to cut out
what might have already cost days or even years of
effort—that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist
and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony,
a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of
all, a life.
c.
Collins’s statement came as a thunderbolt of insight for me.
At the time, I was a hired gun at Toyota, struggling with
a unique but challenging assignment: to identify and then
teach the hidden process behind Toyota’s uncanny ability to
successfully implement several hundreds of thousands of
inventive ideas each year. It occurred to me as I read the es-
say that each of those ideas had behind it the “stop-doing”
philosophy.
I suddenly realized that I had been looking at the problem
in the wrong way. As is natural and intuitive, I had been look-
ing at what to do, rather than what to not do. But as soon as I
shifted my perspective, the vaunted Toyota Production Sys-
tem became for me a study of what wasn’t there, and of how
and what to stop doing. The Lexus line of cars, which had by
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then become America’s leading luxury nameplate, was sud-

denly a shining example of eliminating anything that lacked
passion and perfection. The singular thought that what isn’t
there can often be as or more powerful than what is presented
me with a completely different view of the world. In fact, it
presented an altogether unique reality—and a life-changing
one, at that.
My fresh perspective led to my authoring a book entitled
The Elegant Solution, which used Toyota as the door through
which one could walk to discover a fundamentally different
view of innovation. But Toyota’s world dominance resulted
in what I saw as the real story being upstaged by the example.
The elusive nature of elegance, and the power of elegant so-
lutions of all kinds, remained to be explored and revealed,
untethered from any single illustration.
So what I did next was apply the “stop-doing” strategy
to my own life, leaving my management consulting practice
behind in order to focus on writing, teaching, and conduct-
ing independent research on the hows and whys of elegance.
For two years I dug deeper into the concept, trying to un-
derstand it better, looking for more stories of people and
groups achieving far more with much less. It turns out that
if you know where to look and what to look for, the letter E–
type strategy at the heart of elegance can be found in a wide
universe of fields: from the arts to athletics, from industry to
architecture, from science to society.
I’ll introduce you to some of the individuals, teams, and
companies that have become adept at exploiting this uniquely
powerful principle to better sculpt their ideas, performances,
and lives. The point of my quest is to answer a single ques-
tion: What can we discover and learn that might allow us to bring more
elegance into our own endeavors? I should warn you in advance that
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THE MISSING PIECE
the search will be exemplary rather than exhaustive—for as

Henry David Thoreau once observed, if you’re familiar with
a principle you don’t have to be familiar with all of its ap-
plications. My goal is not to reduce the concept of elegance
to a stepwise prescription. There is no magic elixir, there are
no secret ingredients—because there is no single recipe for
elegance.
Why is elegance so surprisingly powerful? The reasons
aren’t readily apparent, but if we can somehow decode them,
we can hope to understand the thinking required to give the
phenomenon genuine utility. In other words, I’m after the
bigger picture, the bigger idea.
This perspective is an admittedly Eastern view, a cul-
tural artifact resulting from my earlier immersion in an
Asian company and culture. But there is some science be-
hind this, as well. When psychologists at the University
of Illinois showed a picture of an elephant in a jungle to
a study group consisting of people of all ages from the
United States and Asia, the image triggered different brain
activity as shown by functional magnetic resonance imag-
ing (fMRI). Basically, for all the Americans, the part of
the brain that recognizes objects was lit up. Not so for
the Asians. In other words, Asians saw a jungle that hap-
pened to have an elephant in it. But the Americans saw an
elephant without taking much notice of the jungle. In my
pursuit of elegance, I will be focusing on the jungle that
happens to have elephants in it, as opposed to examining
elephants of any particular kind.
To paint that bigger picture vividly we need to examine
elegance from a number of different angles. (Artists tell me
this helps to “render the truth.”) We need some understand-
ing of the virtues and dimensions of elegance in order to
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decipher its code. We need to understand why its impact

is so forcefully seductive. We need to grasp the subtractive
process behind its power. We need a sustainable way to ap-
ply the insight we gain. Finally, we need an understanding of
why elegant ideas are so hard to come by, what the obstacles
are to crafting an elegant this or that. These few objectives
will help us unwrap the central idea, and will form the basic
structure of this book.
d.
But why, you might still be wondering, is this so important?
Because a world in which not doing can be more powerful than
doing is a different world than the one we are used to, with
important implications. Because the most pressing challenges
facing society are in urgent need of sustainable solutions—
elegant ones. Because without a new way of viewing the world
we will most assuredly succumb to employing the same kind
of thinking that created so many of our problems in the first
place. Because precious resources such as land, labor, and
capital are at all-time premiums, and in some cases are rap-
idly shrinking or being depleted. Because by nature we tend
to add when we should subtract, and act when we should
stop and think. Because we need some way to consistently
replace value-destroying complexity with value-creating sim-
plicity. Because we need to know how to make room for more
of what matters by eliminating what doesn’t.
We all reach for elegance at some level, and yet it so of-
ten exceeds our grasp. Just why that’s so is what I want to
explore.
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CHAPTER ONE
Elements of Elegance
I N T H E AU T U M N of 2000, two enterprising Harvard

University undergraduates, Anthony Delvecchio and Ja-
son Karamchandari, launched a Web site they called Shuttle-
Girl. The concept could not have been more simple: help
their classmates make sense out of the comprehensively con-
fusing campus shuttle schedule. On the site, the two gents
quipped:
It is needless to say that taking the shuttle can be a

routine part of a Harvard student’s life. ShuttleGirl
wants to make this aspect of your life a bit easier.
Think about it. We’ve all seen the shuttle schedule.
We’ve all seen twenty-year-olds reduced to tears when
they board a Quad-bound shuttle at 10:00 PM only to
hopelessly return to the Science Center at 10:25 PM,
a final pre-Quad stop. Indeed, the shuttle schedule is
complex in its organization. Some would even say that
a working knowledge of game theory is necessary to
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understand the current shuttle schedule. ShuttleGirl

has seen all this pain and she will stand silently no
more.
To Delvecchio and Karamchandari, and to the entire

shuttle-going student population, for that matter, the cam-
pus shuttle schedule was an incomprehensible, incomplete,
inconvenient, inaccessible, inaccurate, infuriating mess. Their
thought was to deliver just enough information, just in time,
in just the right way so that the shuttle rider’s experience
would be effortless.
In addition to providing route information, ShuttleGirl
evolved to provide a number of services, including real-time
updates that could be received on cellular handheld devices.
Not unlike Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin,
Delvecchio and Karamchandari coupled their combined in-
genuity with computer savvy, developed several new technol-
ogies, tied them to a powerful algorithm, and hid it behind a
spare, user-friendly interface.
They chose for their logo a tantalizing enigma: the silhou-
ette of an undisclosed celebrity pop star, which would later
be replaced by a partial photograph of a mystery coed that
in turn created a campuswide obsession over ShuttleGirl’s
true identity.
Their platform was so enormously appealing that the
Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA), Boston’s mass
transportation agency, adopted it for its entire commuter rail
schedule. Soon, six other cities and a number of other col-
leges would purchase the system, and the duo formed a com-
pany called Second Kiss Wireless to market the ShuttleGirl
platform more widely.
In a June 2001 interview with the campus newspaper the
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ELEMENTS OF ELEGANCE
Harvard Crimson, Delvecchio said of ShuttleGirl’s various ca-

pabilities: “One algorithm does it all. We think ShuttleGirl
is an incredibly elegant solution.”
At Davidson College in Charlotte, North Carolina, a
course on short prose fiction taught by award-winning
writer Randy Nelson begins with a peculiar assignment: us-
ing only a box of 250 toothpicks, three feet of string, and
a 2.5-ounce tube of glue, each student must build a bridge
at least two toothpicks high and strong enough to hold a
brick. The goal, Nelson says, is for each student to come
up with “an elegant solution—one that is simple, beauti-
ful, strong and stunningly original,” and one that uses “every
inch of string, every drop of glue and clicks into place with
the 250th toothpick.” Nelson’s lesson is directly applicable
to good fiction, he says, which in his view must also be beau-
tiful, original, sturdy, not require any more words than neces-
sary, and click into place with the last word.
For six months in 1983, a lengthy political struggle in-
volving the White House, Congress, and civil rights groups
seemed likely to destroy the United States Commission on
Civil Rights. The conflict was sparked by then president
Ronald Reagan’s precipitous nomination of three new com-
missioners. The act turned pending legislation intended to
extend the life of the commission into a political minefield,
as civil rights groups and Congress saw the independent,
bipartisan nature of the commission threatened by execu-
tive interference. Both the House of Representatives and the
Senate introduced resolutions calling for the commission to
be reconstituted as an arm of Congress, rather than as a part
of the executive branch. But Senate leadership was unsettled
by the idea of a new commission in the legislative branch
and balked at calling for a floor vote. Meanwhile, the House
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voted to deny the commission funding if it retained execu-

tive branch status. As the expiration date of the commission
rapidly approached, negotiations intensified and ran around
the clock. At the last possible minute, the Senate proposed a
compromise: a new hybrid agency that would have a six-year
term and eight commissioners—half Democrat and half Re-
publican, four appointed by the president, two by the House,
two by the Senate—who were to run staggered terms, with
removal only for cause. In a single stroke, the offer effectively
preserved the interests of all involved. Declared the New York
Times: “It’s an elegant solution.”
The choice to use the phrase “elegant solution” implies
that there is something distinctive about how each of these
multifarious problems was resolved. What Delvecchio, Nel-
son, and the New York Times seem to share is the understanding
that an elegant solution is in a class all its own, that what sets
it apart is the unique combination of surprising power and
uncommon simplicity, and that elegance entails achieving far
more with much less when faced with a complex problem.
Elegance is indeed a widely sought-after quality, and yet it
takes many forms.
Scientists, mathematicians, and engineers search for theo-
ries that explain highly complex phenomena in stunningly
simple ways. Artists and designers use white, or “negative,”
space to convey visual power. Musicians and composers use
pauses in the music—silence—to create dramatic tension.
Athletes and dancers search for maximum effect with min-
imal effort. In Japan, architects and martial artists pursue
shibumi, a word appropriately without definition but mean-
ing, very loosely translated, “effortless effectiveness.” Physi-
cians draw on the Occam’s razor principle in an effort to
find a single diagnosis to explain the entirety of a patient’s
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symptoms, shaving the analysis down to the simplest expla-

nation. Filmmakers, novelists, and songwriters strive to tell
stories that seem simple but that foster multiple meanings
yet achieve universal resonance.
But no matter how determinedly we pursue it, elegance
is an elusive target. As a principle it resists reduction—it’s
difficult to decode. Perhaps that helps explain why it’s rare.
Experiencing elegance is nearly always profound: it gives us
pause, often evoking an “Of course!”—usually accompa-
nied by a mild slap to the forehead. It can change our view
of things, often forever.
Webster’s New World Dictionary, in an updated definition, de-
scribes elegance as “marked by concision, incisiveness and
ingenuity; cleverly apt and simple, as an elegant solution to a
problem.” But is there a practical way to explain better what
it is and isn’t, what it means, and how it works?
a.
When you enter the office of retired professor Donald Knuth
in the Stanford University Computer Sciences Department,
several things strike you immediately as somewhat odd: he
prefers pad and pencil over a keyboard, he works standing
up, and he doesn’t use e-mail. It’s peculiar because Donald
Knuth is none other than the father of computer science, re-
vered by those in the know for his contributions to the field.
Knuth’s love affair with computers and programming
began over a half century ago, in 1957, and as mainframe
computers were just emerging, “There was something spe-
cial about the IBM 650,” Knuth says in a memoir, “some-
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thing that has provided the inspiration for much of my life’s

work.”
By the following year Knuth had written instructional
code for the IBM 650 and drafted a user manual. CBS Evening
News, which featured one of Knuth’s first programs—it was
designed to compute basketball game statistics—described
it as a “magic formula.”
Author of The Art of Computer Programming, a multivolume
tome that many consider to be the masterwork of the field,
Knuth introduced, as one University of California professor
put it, “elegance into programming,” believing that computer
programmers should view lines of computer code more as
literature, so that people (and not simply other computers)
could easily read and understand them. According to Knuth,
elegant software requires programming in such a transparent
way that not only can other programmers learn from it, but
they can also enjoy reading it in front of the fire, “like good
prose.”
One of Knuth’s favorite lecture topics is “solving puz-
zling problems.” He knows he’s ready to solve a problem
elegantly when he can hold the answer in his head without
having to write it down. Even with all of the advancement in
software coding in the last fifty years, his programs remain
the de facto standard for scientific publishing today.
What is Donald Knuth’s definition of elegance? “Sym-
metrical, pleasingly memorable, spare—with the ease and
immortal ring of an E=mc2.”
Those criteria are a bit cryptic, which perhaps isn’t so
surprising, given that Knuth’s world revolves around a code,
something that is by definition mysterious.
So what exactly does he mean?
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b.
In 1782 a Swiss mathematician by the name of Leonhard
Euler wrote about a numerical array called Latin squares.
Latin squares were symmetrical grids with an equal number
(n) of rows and columns. The only rule was that every num-
ber from 1 to n had to appear exactly once in each row and
column. In other words, if there were seven rows and seven
columns, the numbers 1 through 7 would appear exactly
once in each row and column.
Fast-forward nearly two hundred years to 1979, when
Dell puzzle magazines published a numerical brainteaser
they called Number Place. Indianapolis architect Howard
Garnes had, in his spare time, tinkered with Euler’s Latin
squares to design a nine-by-nine Latin square with a new
twist. He added nine three-by-three subgrids. Each could
contain exactly one occurrence of all the numbers 1 through
9, in addition to the rows and columns requirement. The
goal, of course, was to fill in the matrix completely. A few
clues were given in the form of numbers already in place in
one of the eighty-one boxes.
Shortly thereafter, in 1984, the Japanese publisher Nikoli
introduced the game in its newspaper, adding yet a further
twist. No more than thirty clues or “givens” were permitted,
and they had to be distributed with exact mirror symmetry.
Nikoli renamed the game Sudoku. It became a nationwide
obsession in Japan within a few years.
In 2004, retired Hong Kong judge and puzzle fanatic
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Wayne Gould made a trip to London in a successful effort

to persuade the Times editors to print Sudoku puzzles in
their paper. The Times introduced Sudoku as a daily feature
on November 12, 2004. The craze spread to Australia and
New Zealand, where newspapers like the Daily Telegraph and
the Daily Mail began publishing Sudoku the following year.
In July 2005, British satellite television channel Sky One
launched the world’s largest Sudoku puzzle, a 275-foot con-
struction, by carving it in the side of a hill near the city of
Bristol.
By the end of 2005, the World Puzzle Federation had
declared Sudoku the number-one logic puzzle in the world.
Today there are online versions, Sudoku radio and televi-
sion shows and games, Sudoku clubs, strategy books, videos,
card games, and competitions. In 2006, Italy hosted the first
World Sudoku Championship, with teams from around the
world participating. Being the champion in one’s own coun-
try is tough enough, but the competition in these interna-
tional games is even more fierce.
Will Shortz, the famed crossword puzzle editor for the
New York Times and the only person in the world with a degree
in enigmatology (the study of codes and puzzles), describes
himself as a Sudoku “addict.” By the end of 2006, Sudoku
was a worldwide craze, with millions playing it daily.
So what is the connection between Sudoku and Knuth? I
would argue that it is the elements of elegance. In keeping
with Knuth’s criteria, Sudoku can help us to arrive at a con-
cise working definition of the concept.
First, in keeping with Knuth’s first dimension, Sudoku is
symmetrical, with its squares inside of squares and mirrored
distribution of clues. Second, it is seductive—to the point of
being irresistible and craze-worthy—another way to couch
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Knuth’s “pleasingly memorable.” Will Shortz confirms that

his Sudoku addiction stems from the seductive appeal of
the empty squares to be filled in. It is intentionally spare, in
keeping with Knuth’s third dimension, through a process best
described as subtractive. The Sudoku puzzle designer crafts a
complete solution and then symmetrically subtracts filled-in
squares to arrive at the starting grid, which is predominantly
empty. Finally, and as a result of these first three, the game is
sustainable in terms of both the infinite number of games that
can be constructed, as well as players’ interest in the game. In
other words, there is an “ease and immortal ring” to it. In
fact, Sudoku could not be easier to learn: you do not even
need to know how to count, its one rule can be explained
in a single sentence, it takes but a minute to grasp, and it
is universal in nature (unlike crossword puzzles, which are
knowledge-based as well as language-specific) because the
numbers are just symbols. And yet, the underlying complex-
ity behind the logic needed to solve a Sudoku puzzle can be
incredibly challenging.
Symmetry. Seduction. Subtraction. Sustainability. These are the key
elements of elegance—the laws that can help us harness the
power of the missing piece.
Symmetry helps us solve problems of structure, order, and
aesthetics. We are natural-born symmetry seekers. Most of
nature, with its infinitely repeating patterns, is symmetrical.
It is present in nearly every living thing, and we generally
equate symmetry with beauty and balance. In fact, a number
of studies have found that most people find symmetrical faces
more attractive. But symmetry isn’t limited to biology. Sym-
metry is where mathematics, nature, science, and art come
together. We are adept at noticing a lack of symmetry, which
is why we can exploit it to our advantage—when someone
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experiences a degree of asymmetry, they naturally want to “fill

in” the obviously missing piece. It’s the nature of symmetry
that enables us to find solutions given only partial informa-
tion. When symmetry comes into play, what appears to be
missing isn’t. It’s at once absent, and yet present.
When, for example, Sopranos viewers were robbed of a stan-
dard story structure—a beginning, middle, and end—they
were initially distraught. But when reassured by the story
creator himself that the missing piece was “all there,” they
went in search of an ending—the “truth”—to restore their
perceived loss of symmetry. Symmetry allowed you to com-
plete the letter E earlier, and the role of symmetry in Sudoku
is clear.
Seduction addresses the problem of creative engagement. It
captivates any attention and activates any imagination. The
power of suggestion is often stronger than that of full dis-
closure. Leaving something to the imagination, open to in-
terpretation, creates an irresistible aura of mystery, and we
are compelled to find answers. The seduction is in what we
don’t know. What we don’t know far outweighs what we do,
and we are naturally curious; we are easily drawn to the un-
known, precisely because it is unknown. What isn’t there
drives us to resolve our curiosity.
The gentlemen of ShuttleGirl understood the impact
of mystique. Withholding the true identity of ShuttleGirl
wasn’t a cheap schoolboy trick—it was a stroke of marketing
ingenuity that engaged the entire student body.
Neuroscientists conducting research into positive emo-
tional reactions have found that solving puzzles like Sudoku,
and the missing Sopranos ending, activates the “satisfaction”
center of the brain known as the striatum. The striatum is
connected to parts of the frontal lobe known to be involved
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with directing logical thought and action toward goals. The

accomplishment of “filling in” a Sudoku puzzle, or solving
a whodunnit mystery, releases dopamine—a neurotransmit-
ter long associated with pleasure and addictive behaviors. It
delivers a mental “rush” that makes the player crave more.
Will Shortz is in fact accurate in labeling his Sudoku habit
as addictive.
Subtraction helps us solve the problem of economy. Do-
ing less, conserving, doesn’t come naturally. Humans are
natural-born adders, hard-wired to push, collect, hoard,
store, and consume. Perhaps that’s why Costco is so success-
ful—something about taking home thirty-six rolls of toilet
tissue makes us feel especially secure.
And therein lies the conundrum. The same penchant we
have to “fill in,” to add, is exactly why elegance, being sub-
tractive, is so elusive. Whether we’re talking about a product,
a performance, a market, or an organization, our addiction
to addition results in inconsistency, overload, or waste, and
sometimes all three. We all face these types of problems. It is
how we handle them that enables or prevents elegance.
Do we really gain through loss? Can we actually add value
by subtracting?
W. L. Gore and Associates, recognized as one of the
world’s most innovative companies, completely eliminated
job titles and typical corporate hierarchy in order to release
the creativity of its staff employees. Toyota’s youth brand,
Scion, refused to advertise and drastically reduced the num-
ber of standard features on its vehicles to allow ad-averse
Generation Y buyers who wanted to make a personal state-
ment to customize their cars with trendy accessories. Eu-
rope’s “do nothing” default on organ donations—meaning
you are an organ donor unless you opt out—results in nearly
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quadruple the participation seen in the United States. The

British bank first direct went branchless and became the most
highly recommended bank in the United Kingdom. French
manufacturing company FAVI realized better employee rela-
tions when they eliminated their human resources depart-
ment. Cities in Holland have eliminated traffic controls and
experienced not only better traffic flow but also a significant
drop in automobile accidents.
So the answer is yes. The trick is in understanding what
to eliminate, and exactly how to go about it. Sustainability
helps us solve that problem; it implies a process that is both
repeatable and lasting. To consistently find elegant solutions,
we need to alter how we approach problems, so that the prin-
ciples of symmetry, seduction, and subtraction can be ap-
plied effectively, over and over again. A sustainable thinking
strategy helps us to do that by giving us a process we can use
and reuse to tap the power of the missing piece.
Together symmetry, seduction, subtraction, and sustain-
ability provide a solid framework for understanding how
these elements work in the pursuit of elegance. But while
each plays a part, it is the collective execution of all four
elements that determines the uncommon simplicity and sur-
prising power we seek. Symmetry, for example, doesn’t nec-
essarily require or even imply a corresponding subtractive,
spare quality. That something is subtractive or spare need not
mean it’s seductive. And simply because something is seduc-
tive in some way does not automatically render it sustainable;
it may turn out to be a fleeting fancy. In fact, the elements
of elegance can easily conflict with one another. That’s one
of the things that makes it so difficult to achieve. Elegance
is at once symmetrical, seductive, subtractive, and sustainable.
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It takes a blend of logic and creativity to understand how to

balance the four.
c.
There is an old joke among economists that the solution for
inflation is actually quite simple: lower the price of what you
sell, and pay people less. The point of the joke, of course, is
that the solution isn’t a solution at all, because it ignores the
complexities of a vexing problem. Unfortunately, the quip
often plays out in real life. For example, in 2003, Mitsu-
bishi Motors attempted to prop up their flagging sales in
the United States with a promotion called Zero-Zero-Zero.
Consumers could buy a car with no money down, no pay-
ments, and no interest for one full year. Unfortunately, the
program lived up to its name: thousands scooped up the
offer, driving their car for one year, but then letting the car
get repossessed. Mitsubishi’s losses approached a half billion
dollars from the defaulted loans. The solution failed because
it fell short of addressing the more complex issue of why no
one was interested in buying a Mitsubishi vehicle in the first
place.
When U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jr. said generations ago that “I wouldn’t give a fig for sim-
plicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life
for simplicity on the other side of complexity,” he meant
that to find elegance, you must appreciate, embrace, and then
travel beyond complexity. When we use the word elegant, we’re
describing a solution that is as surprisingly powerful as it is
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uncommonly simple: it goes to the heart of a wickedly com-

plex problem with such laser-like clarity that it leaves no
doubt that the solution is the right one, or at the very least
a long way down the right road. Elegant solutions solve in-
tractable problems once and for all without causing further
ones. Put another way, not everything simple is elegant, but
everything elegant is simple.
Elegance is “far side” simplicity that is artfully crafted,
emotionally engaging, profoundly intelligent. It should not
be confused with “near side” simplicity, which stops short
of confronting complexity, much like the “voluntary sim-
plicity” movement that peaked during the 1990s in the U.S.
Pacific Northwest did. In principle espousing a philosophy
of more elegant living, in practice it centered more on reject-
ing and avoiding many of the complications of the mod-
ern world—a practice resulting for the most part in simply
eliminating many of the conveniences and advantages of a
rapidly advancing, technologically progressive society.
Elegance is to this sort of simplicity as chess is to check-
ers. Both are played on the same board, yet the first demands
more strategic thinking and much deeper experience to
truly master the goal of immobilizing—checkmating—a
single piece, the opponent’s king, in as few moves as possible.
Games can go on for days, with no action for hours as the
players think through their many moves and countermoves
ahead. Checkers, with its mostly single-step play, is far less
demanding, easier to learn, and quicker to play.
Chess masters understand the nature of complexity—that
it is part of the game, and it’s why they play it. The challenge
and thrill lies in the endless search for ways to manage and
exploit those complexities. Complexity isn’t the enemy—
without it they’d be playing checkers. Similarly, elegance re-
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quires the presence of complexity. In much the same way

light requires darkness and trust requires uncertainty, with-
out complexity one need not, in fact cannot, talk about el-
egance.
Elegance is about chess, not checkers.
d.
There is a final oddity about Donald Knuth worth mention-
ing. He and his wife, Jill, have a peculiar and extensive photo
collection of road signs. In fact, they have over eight hun-
dred of them, from all over the United States and elsewhere.
They are classified into one of ten major categories: arrows,
intersections, lanes, road status, temporary, people, animals,
vehicles, entrances, and weather. Each is listed with complete
details of the sighting, accompanied by Global Positioning
System coordinates. But that’s not what makes the collection
so strange. Rather, it’s the fact that only diamond-shaped
signs are included, and at that only the ones Knuth considers
truly unique.
Why only those with a diamond shape? The answer is not
so surprising. To Knuth, diamonds are the icon of elegance.
Think for a moment about diamonds. They are rare, valu-
able, and elegant. They are made from the incredibly simple
elements, carbon (on which every living organism on earth
is based) and oxygen (one of the predominant components
of the air we breathe): carbon dioxide. They are formed in
nature over eons and under just the right conditions—ex-
treme heat and pressure—through a complex process that
rearranges the carbon bonds in a highly organized and enor-
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mously powerful way. They are essentially transparent, not

unlike Knuth’s vision of what elegantly engineered computer
code should look like. They can withstand and dissipate tre-
mendous heat and pressure. They are balanced, symmetrical,
and multifaceted when cut into gems. Diamonds become
more valuable not by the addition of material, but by the
subtraction of it—the precise cutting of a raw diamond
into a brilliant and polished gem. The end result is seductive,
carrying a unique power to captivate and enthrall. Diamonds,
so the saying goes, are forever.
It is no mystery, then, why Donald Knuth is attracted to
road signs that embody the ideal of elegance: symmetry, seduc-
tion, subtraction, sustainability.
We’re ready to begin our journey. First stop: Symmetryville.
What we find there may surprise you.
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To purchase a copy of
In Pursuit of Elegance
visit one of these online retailers:

Amazon
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Powell’s Books
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In URSUIT of LEGANCE

Why the Best Ideas Have Something Missing

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r2.indd iii 4/2/09 1:19:56 PM

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States by Broadway Books, an imprint of

BROADWAY BOOKS and its logo, a letter B bisected on the

All trademarks are the property of their respective companies.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r2.indd iv 4/2/09 1:19:57 PM

The Missing Piece . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Desperately Seeking Symmetry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Laws of Subtraction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105

On Sustainable Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd v 2/24/09 9:55:43 AM

Elegance in Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd vi 2/24/09 9:55:43 AM

While brevity may not cause elegance, longwindedness

“Less is the new more.” Easy to learn: symmetry, seduction, subtraction,

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r2.indd vii 4/3/09 11:10:39 AM

The Missing Piece

O N S U N DAY, J U N E 10, 2007, nearly twelve million

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 1 2/24/09 9:55:43 AM

heralded the end of an era, loyal followers expressed their

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 2 2/24/09 9:55:43 AM

The following Monday morning media coverage was over-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 3 2/24/09 9:55:43 AM

rable hour in recent television history. By all accounts, the

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,

David Chase’s groundbreaking choice to abandon a con-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 4 2/24/09 9:55:44 AM

tion” implies something finished, something flawless. The

If you can’t, it’s because a key piece of information is miss-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 5 2/24/09 9:55:44 AM

could have caused such a stir, no “complete” E, no matter

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 6 2/24/09 9:55:45 AM

popotamus and her calf when she decides to charge. If you’re

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 7 2/24/09 9:55:45 AM

structing a lesson in the form of an assignment she called

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 8 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

irrelevant. All three criteria had to be met in order for any

A great piece of art is composed not just of what is

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 9 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

then become America’s leading luxury nameplate, was sud-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 10 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

the search will be exemplary rather than exhaustive—for as

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 11 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

decipher its code. We need to understand why its impact

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 12 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

I N T H E AU T U M N of 2000, two enterprising Harvard

It is needless to say that taking the shuttle can be a

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 13 2/24/09 9:55:46 AM

understand the current shuttle schedule. ShuttleGirl

To Delvecchio and Karamchandari, and to the entire

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 14 2/24/09 9:55:47 AM

Harvard Crimson, Delvecchio said of ShuttleGirl’s various ca-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 15 2/24/09 9:55:47 AM

voted to deny the commission funding if it retained execu-

May_9780385526494_3p_all_r1.indd 16 2/24/09 9:55:47 AM

symptoms, shaving the analysis down to the simplest expla-